The royal apartments evoked the forgotten rooms from a Dickensian-like novel, ghostly, somewhat damp, and with a veil of desperation breeding from every surface. The bric-a-brac of Kenzi’s and Lauren’s abandoned lives overran the residence and created a strange debris-field of discarded personal and household items—single socks, cracked picture frames, lids missing pots, really anything Bruce could carry or tear off a wall—these things snaking and migrating within the paths Bo tread throughout her home. She learned to cast the memory charm on multiple items at once and carried conversations with the spectres of Kenzi or Lauren from one room to the next without pause. Eventually, as Bruce had warned, each item lost its ability to generate a vision but rather than get rid of it at its stopping point, Bo insisted that nothing be thrown away. Bo met every attempt to clean with a fit of hysteria and eyes blue with rage. She cocooned herself within a storm of filth except for the kitchen, which, Tamsin stood firm, be kept spotless. ”You may sleep with rats for all I care,” she griped, ”but I sure as hell am not dining with them.”

These transient phantoms soaked her heart and nibbled at her sanity with the tenacity and skill of gutter vermin, and there was little Tamsin and Bruce—who now lived in their own rooms within the royal residence—could do about it, except to try and conceal her addiction from an outside world moving further and further away from her grasp. Nearly a year passed since Kenzi had disappeared, and a little more than six months since Tamsin had acquired Vex’s blood oath to find Bo’s former sidekick in exchange for his freedom. The Elders viewed him as a traitor, an accessory to a crime, and a fugitive after Massimo stole the origins seed; but the newly appointed Chief Counsel Trick McCorrigan persuaded the Elders to show mercy, and to drop the charges.

”Either you’re some smooth talker or you’ve got some weird, wicked Fae magic up your sleeves, Trickster,” Tamsin managed a straight face when she asked him how he swayed the Elders.

”Or I’m just that good,” Trick reassured her. ”And since you and Bruce seem to be the only ones she’ll allow close to her, send someone you can trust to find Kenzi. I fear that if this goes on much longer, we risk losing Bo’s mind forever—and if anyone can get her to come back, it’s her best friend.”